


humanity

by alwaystiredneversleep



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Angst, Bad Ending, Clay | Dream Angst (Video Blogging RPF), Dehumanization, Deity Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Gen, Gods, Hallucinations, Heavy Angst, Hurt Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Hurt No Comfort, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Intrusive Thoughts, Paranoia, Sad Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Sad Ending, Suicidal Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Unspecified Setting, but for now i lost all of the flow, but i was thinkin more medieval type setting, hey uh this is really heavy please be very careful, i guess?? im iffy on that one, i lost the flow after going to sleep, i was in an uhhh mood while writing this and also it was written at 3-5 am so, itll probably be within now and two weeks, its gonna be continued, no beta we die like technoblade never does, sorry for the shit end!!!, this is pure projection and vent, vent fic, writing may not be up to par with my normal stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:16:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28722012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alwaystiredneversleep/pseuds/alwaystiredneversleep
Summary: (hey please be really really careful its a vent fic for some really bad stuff- tw's are in the tags)Desperate to escape his own mental instability and the growing monotony of the world, Dream joins the Gods. However, he might not find what he wants to among them.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Unspecified Character, Clay | Dream & Unspecified Deities
Kudos: 40





	humanity

Dream remembers lots of things.

He remembers whispered promises of friendship and love and everything the world could offer, the best life he could possibly have, away from the dark monotone of life that struck so painfully within his chest. 

He remembers offered power, the idea of _being_ powerful staining his thoughts with happy darkness that seemed like the perfect solution to the never-ending boring of life as just another human.

He remembers rising from his status as nothing but a lowly being to the status of a god, a deity, someone who lived above humanity and the easy endings it brought.

He remembers the first time he realized losing his humanity wasn’t something he wanted, watching as friends and family died below him while his heart continued to beat just as strong and his body stayed just as it was when he was so young. A mere infant, really, if you compared it to him as a god.

He remembers realizing that there was no cure to the monotony, no matter the power that radiated from your being, no matter how powerful of a god you were.

\--

Dream was 13 when he was going to give up. 

So young, promised the world, promised that childhood was the perfect center of life that was supposed to be happy and complete and amazing, a place where you could be innocent and have to worry about nothing but the childish problems you had at young ages like his own.

But Dream found no solace in the idea that he was innocent, that idea long washed away by painful intrusive thoughts that tore into his mind and made him think of horribly terrifying and sexual things that made him want to puke. He never managed to tell anyone about them, too afraid of what anyone else’s reaction might be. After all, if the one who had thought them up couldn’t deal with them, how would his friends and family, those who still believed he was nothing but a pure child, not even a year into being a teen?

At some point, some of the thoughts that made his eyes dart around and fingernails tear into his skin with fear managed to manifest themselves into painful paranoia, a harsh feeling of fear that scraped at his mind and left deep scratches with cruel knives of thought. He knew it wasn’t real, knew none of it was true, but he couldn’t help the fear that grew into the now-familiar panic when something so simple disturbed him.

It got worse, somehow. The dark fear twisted into harsher delusions that made him fear leaving his bed at night or fooled him into hearing things that weren’t there or had him feel phantom fingers ghost over his hand late at night when he tried to sleep. Sometimes, he’d spot things such as eyes peeking through his window, watching him so observantly. 

He wanted to tear out his brain, wanted to remove whatever sickness made him believe these horrid things were there, made him want to scream and cry and throw up deep in the middle of the night when no one was around to provide comfort. He still hadn’t managed to tell anyone about the things he saw, especially as they grew from the original thoughts that were only that, disturbing ideas with no real shape. 

He wished it’d go back to those, those thoughts that he could contain with a sharp pinch or some menial task that eventually consumed his mind and left him unable to think about the horrifying ideas his brain spawned. Those, he could get rid of, could remove, could stop. The hallucinations stuck around until they wanted to leave, and then they were gone. He had no say in it.

Sometimes, the hallucinations stayed, or familiar ones continued, but nearly all of them seemed designed to make him shiver with fear or hyperventilate with deeply rooted panic. 

Eventually, he found distractions, things that led him away from the fear and the deep self-loathing. Those worked, for a bit, carefully constructing worlds built on friends and family who managed to sidetrack the overwhelming fear. But, like all temporary solutions, anything that helped slowly grew monotonous, boring and tedious.

Nothing ever truly helped anymore. He was scared, or he was bored, or he was finding difficulty in some task that should be so simple, so easy for his mind to attack and complete. Nothing was truly easy, nothing was truly happy, nothing was truly helpful. There was only the horrible monotone and the never-ending fear.

He was 13 when he gave up on the idea of anything being worth it anymore. 

Dream was so constantly fed the idea that things got worse as you got older, that childhood was the peak of your life, and that you should live it to your fullest potential and be a happy kid. When you were an adult, everything got harder, everything got more painful and more tedious and everyone hated their jobs and their spouses and their lives and-

Dream couldn’t deal with that thought, the idea that he would only get worse, that he _could_ only get worse, so he decided that he wouldn’t have to anymore. The night when he had first tried was the first night he heard a god, voice cold and grating on his sensitive ears.

The god had whispered that it was okay, that it had saved him, that it would help him get through it, that it had heard his pain, as quiet as he was. It had promised him help, that it would allow him through this, that it could give him love and friends and everything he had ever truly wanted. 

Dream had let himself fall into the murmurs of peace, of happiness, of help through all of the hardship that was life as a human. He didn’t remember much from that night, but when he awoke, he was alone again, the world just as empty and gray as before. It made him want to scream, to shout, and to curse the ones who had promised him freedom from this disgustingly never-ending monotone of a life.

He didn’t scream.

He accepted the treatment, the things that were supposed to help, but Dream thought they were treating the wrong thing. They looked to help him be happy, but the happiness was always the same as before. He could be happy. He could do it easily. It was just that happiness was never right, it was just the same dull feeling that consumed the rest of the world, bleeding through all positive feelings and staining them with the monotone.

They never really asked what was wrong, either. He didn’t know that he would’ve told them if they did. The gore, the fear, the sexual things that ran rampant through his mind as such a young person were secrets at this point, closely guarded and tucked to his chest in a place where he didn’t think he’d even be able to stop protecting anymore. They were his to hold onto, now.

\--

Dream was 15 when he tried again.

It was for the same reasons as before, but this time, he had more evidence. The people who had fed him everything about it only getting worse were right. The eyes that watched him when he tried to sleep only grew in number, only turned their gazes closer and for longer. The hallucinations weren’t always fear anymore, sometimes just distortions of the world around him, making him confused in situations where he should’ve understood.

He had found someone, though. They didn’t understand, not quite, their mind not as diluted with the freakish delusions that tainted his own, but they understood the scraping paranoia and the disgusting thoughts that sapped his mind so thoroughly, and they understood the anxiety that spawned from everything and everywhere even better than he did. (Sometimes, he thought they understood the need to leave the world they lived in, too.) They laughed together, and occasionally, the happiness born with them was true. 

They were the only person who he had ever let out the secrets to, ever told about the eyes that watched him, or the creatures that lurked around corners, or the beasts that his mind conjured in productive reapings of fear. They accepted him, and for that, he loved them. They called each other soulmates, hearts born to be best friends, to love and stand with one another. Dream was glad he could say he loved them, but neither of them was in love. That was okay with both of the two, despite constant mockings from other, less close friends.

But they weren’t enough, even despite the love that simmered so deeply in Dream’s chest when he was around them. As much as Dream wanted to stay with them, wanted to make them happy, he was weak. He wanted to leave, wanted to get out of the dark world that grew ever darker, color slowly leaking out of everything until it was the repetitive gray that glossed over all things. 

He wanted to be rid of the thoughts that plagued his thoughts, the sexual ones that came so much more often and cut so much deeper, spawning even when he looked at his family. He hated those ones the most, the ones that had made him puke now, throwing up into the trash as images of depraved acts flashed through his mind, painfully clear in his mind’s eye. 

He wanted to be rid of the paranoia, the echoing fear that surrounded him and told him that something was waiting for him around that corner, that someone had moved that curtain, that that drawer hadn’t been open before. It was the kind of fear that left him with bleeding arms from where his fingers had torn into them, the kind that left it painful to eat food with salt because of how far his teeth had dug into his lips, the kind that made him wait until the sun had risen through the windows to even attempt sleep. 

He wanted to be rid of the hallucinations, the twisted beasts that were spawned from the deepest parts of his mind, the fantasy creatures that crawled up his walls or along his bed or dropped themselves into his food and drink and made it unusable. It was these delusions that made him hear soft breathing throughout his room, a little giggle, rain when the sky was empty, the click of a camera flash before the light burnt his eyes despite there being nothing there. It was these delusions that made him _feel_ that same breathing, warm puffs of air against the back of his neck, or ghostly fingers trailing over his body, or little insects creeping all over his skin and making him want to sob. It was these delusions that made him message his soulmate so frantically in the ungodly hours of the night, rousing the sleepy teen to have them provide comfort after a camera flash through the window, having them assure Dream that no one was there to take a picture of him and that he was okay. 

So he had planned this time, better than the younger teen who had been so careless with their fruitless attempt at their own life. He had thought it would work this time, but he knew when he heard the painful caress of the god’s voice that he had once again failed. It hurt worse this time, the cold feeling before only causing discomfort, the voice this time scraping onto his mind, harsh enough to bleed.

This time, the god promised him things again, but it took him longer to listen. The offers were new this time, hushed pledges of gifts of power and strength, the ability to rise above the gray that consumed everything within his life, to escape the uninterrupted blandness that surrounded everything he knew. 

In spite of his hesitance from the empty promises from before, he believed it once again, the god knowing every little thing to make him tick, to make him want to go sliding into the cool pool of hurt that the voice brought. 

When he awoke, he did scream, for the room was empty aside for his soulmate, sitting asleep in their chair, and he had been once again cheated out of the gorgeous promises of escape from the very world he had been shoved back into. 

\--

He was 17 when it finally worked. 

Dream still had his friend, but his fear of losing them grew daily, and he knew his own burdens were only weighing on their shoulders, the rapidly worsening state of his own mind only tearing down theirs. They had been doing okay, staying alive and keeping themself together, and he was bringing them down with his constant 5 am messages and calls that were nothing like normal peoples calls, shot through with panicked sobs and teary requests for some kind of comfort, any kind of comfort that they could offer.

He was waiting for the day that they would tell him they didn’t have time to remind him to drink and eat and sleep, couldn’t wake up to assure him that he was alone in his room, wouldn’t whisper comfortingly repetitive phrases to him and hold him through harsh panic attacks that made him rip at his skin and lips.

He knew he had become dependent on them. He knew that they were the only thing that kept his sweaty hand from slipping off the edge of that looming abyss, the only handhold he still had that allowed him to stay holding onto the world that was now painted in entirely shades of gray, the monotone having finally overtaken almost everything. 

Even his pain was repetitive now. 

There was only one thing still bright in this world, a spot of color among the boring shades that colored so much of his life, one of the few connections he had still managed to hold, and he knew that it was growing increasingly fragile. His soulmate was so bright, a light that lit up all around them, the only sun that still managed to burn bright within Dream’s world. He himself was gray now, but they still let him hang out around them, let his chest be lit up and warmed by the friendship they radiated.

He had been paying attention, watching as everything got worse, as even the only bright thing left began to darken around him. He also knew that it was only darkening around him, the colors flaring up when touching the other people it interacted with. Life was getting worse again, the world around him and the world inside of him darkening, following the pattern he had been promised, the idea of worse as you get older never ringing more true.

Panic attacks had grown in frequency, the harsh moments that gripped his heart and sped up his breathing at even the slightest stressor until he thought he might understand the way that his soulmate saw it, anxiety tearing through him at every chance it had. 

Sometimes, he wondered if childhood truly would be the peak of his life, and then he wondered if he would ever make it past his childhood. He was building a plan again, one that he was sure would get him out, would free himself of the world and the world of him. 

He wondered if the concept of childhood worked differently if you died young. If you died when you were 17, was your childhood your entire life, or did you not have one, since you never reached being an adult? 

Dream was determined this time. He was so completely and utterly determined, so ready to get this right, to stop being a burden to his soulmate, to stop causing so much trouble, to stop echoing so negatively in the life of everyone and anyone he ever met. He knew this plan would work, no way that it wouldn’t.

He had made proper preparations for saying goodbye this time, too, writing something that explained himself. He had taken those secrets that were dug deep into his chest, and he had ripped them out and written them down, explaining things that he had only ever explained to one person, letting anyone who read the note know what was wrong with his fucked up brain, letting anyone who read the note know that he truly wasn’t supposed to be here because what kind of abomination has thoughts like his and isn’t a horrible person, a freak of nature that should never see another person ever ever ever and deserved to be alone in their mind with all of those creatures that scraped against the edges and broke him down until he was always sobbing and in pain and incapable of being independent.

When the god’s voice greeted him again, he wanted to cry. He thought that he had failed again, that the god was here to offer him more empty promises before placing him back in the painfully repetitive world they called Earth.

But this time, he got more than the god’s voice. It showed itself to him, smiling peacefully and stroking his sweat-soaked jawline, carefully tracing up until it was lightly rubbing his scalp, fingers icy cold against his overheated skin. It congratulated him, told him he had finally made it, that he was going to be one of its kind now. He was confused for a moment before he realized that he had done it. He had died, and now he was being offered the promises that he had previously thought were empty. He was reaping the reward of his own death, escaping into a world without the gray.

When he was made into a god, he screamed, the feeling of power painful and overwhelming to one who had been trapped in an even weaker state than most for so long. The first god he had ever met comforted him, carding an ever-freezing hand through his hair and hugging him to a firm _(and gods so cold why was it so cold?)_ chest. It had whispered words of comfort, told him about how its promises were finally ringing true, how he was past the gray and the hallucinations and the paranoia and the thoughts.

He cried, and no one there knew if it was from happiness or pain.

\--

Dream didn’t know how old he was when he wanted his humanity back.

It had been getting better, the world filled with color and light again, his brain being properly nourished so that even if he couldn’t get rid of the fear and the delusions, he knew how to deal with them, had strategies and people who could and would help him. The gods helped him, made sure he had what he needed.

It was a bit lonely. All of the gods had been kind, but none of them was anything more than an acquaintance, and Dream couldn’t seem to bring himself to actually befriend any of them. He missed his best friend, his soulmate, the one person who seemed to actually understand his issues because even though the gods knew, they knew by looking inside of his mind. They didn’t actually know what it was like to feel that panic, to be so afraid that the only way to distract yourself was to rip at your skin with overgrown fingernails or to bite your lip until it bled.

They were kind, but they were distant and cold. He wanted the warmth of his friend, wanted to hug them tightly and hold their hand and laugh as they did so long ago. It took him years before he managed to build up the confidence to ask the gods to see his soulmate. He was met with sad yes’s, a pat on the back, and whispered apologies that he didn’t understand. Why would they be saying sorry to him? 

He left for Earth for the first time in so long, riding the wind down to the quaint town he had once called home, the place he had been promised that his friend still lived. He searched for a bit, having to travel around to find the home of the friend he loved so much. When he knocked on the door, he was met by a younger woman, one he didn’t recognize, one who ushered him inside and took him into a living room. 

He waited there as she went to go get the friend he so longed to see, staring at the bookshelves uncomfortably. After a while, a short old person came heading down the stairs, undeniably familiar but still so strange. It took a moment for Dream to place the frail old figure as the bright spot of warmth that had lit up his world when he was still one of the humans.

They met in a hug, Dream now so much taller than the short one. They smiled at him, relieved to see him, not even attempting to ask how he had gotten there or why he still looked so young. He refrained from asking why they looked so old as well, despite the all-consuming confusion and fear that spawned from seeing his best friend so late into age. 

Dream had only been allowed a short while on Earth, the existence of gods among men being too much for the structure of any world to handle. He left before long, placing a kiss on the forehead of the old friend and thanking the young woman (his friend’s caretaker, he had found out, there to make sure that they were able to operate properly.) 

He had disappeared back into the wind, finding his way up and into the land of the gods once again. They had apologized to him, and one of them had explained to him in hushed tones that time was different for the gods, different for the people Dream lived amongst. Years passed on Earth in mere days here, a month among humans a second among gods. 

Dream had died and begun his new life only a month ago, but to his best friend, the family and friends he had left behind, it would’ve been decades, would’ve aged some of them past death and the rest deep into old age, like his soulmate, who was still managing to hold on so resolutely. It made sense to him, seeing the old friend clinging to their own life so desperately, something they had managed to do their entire lives, even when he failed so utterly. 

It only took him a little while to realize what the speeding time meant for the frail old figure he had met on Earth. He had pleaded with the gods to save them when he figured it out, begged and sobbed to no avail. There was nothing that the cold figures would do because they had a duty to stay back from humanity, to not edit anything natural. One of the gods attempted some kind of comfort, hugging Dream to its chest and carding freezing fingers through his hair, but it only served to infuriate and sadden the fellow deity further. 

Dream was a deity now as well, but he hadn’t been taught to use his power, and he didn’t dare disrupt the word of the more powerful gods to learn and change the world. Not only was it disobeying a strict rule, but it would also fracture the structure of the world itself.

**Author's Note:**

> hi!!
> 
> i sincerely apologize for the shitty ending, i know it's sucky. this was supposed to be a oneshot but i finally attempted sleep because it was 5:30 am and then i lost hte flow,, so yeah ;-;
> 
> um if u got this far i sincerely hope you are doing alright esp if you have any issues that relate to this
> 
> kudos and such are appreciated, but for this fic, i completely understand if you are a total lurker. it's really heavy, and it's just kinda 3.9k words of projection and venting. 
> 
> i will be continuing this. definitely will. i'm not sure when, but i do expect it to be sooner rather than later. i am just waiting for the feelings i got when i wrote this to return, and i find it unlikely that they'll be gone for long.
> 
> thank you for reading!


End file.
